Archive of all previous showcases
Edited by Susan Jane Sims
In the Moonlight
In the moonlight, lost
in the heady fragrance of
desire, lovers
part with a sigh, their
eyes glow like embers
locked in embrace –
their kiss butterflies
lingering in the deep throat
of honeyed flowers.
Shanta Acharya
Missing pieces
As I was carried to a distant land,
Pieces fell away in transit,
A jigsaw, incomplete,
A picture, distorted.
I knew I was not theirs,
long before they told me.
My features, my colour, my blood
was from somewhere else.
I was the answer to a womb,
too precious to make its own.
It was the solution to a hand that
could not hold its own.
Singled out, Chosen, I became someone else.
Care there was; love there was not.
Gratitude was demanded and given.
My heart yearned for that missing piece,
Love.
That which I saw, heard, dreamt ,
could not feel.
I knew it was somewhere far away,
in a cave, in a hut, perhaps a palace?
In the secret of a woman’s heart,
Also pining for the love she had lost.
Leela Gautam
House to house
The soldiers went from house to house,
knocking on doors, breaking down doors.
We’ll take you, they said. We are in need of
a little comfort, a little warm flesh.
At one house they said, not you,
you can stay, you are too ugly.
Afterwards the women crept home
in the darkness.
One found her husband dead in their doorway
She sat by his body until morning.
Friends will say of the women,
They never really came back.
Their bodies are healed. Even their minds
Allow them sometimes to forget.
But look in their eyes. Those hours linger.
Susan Jane Sims
Wingaersheek
Forget red hearts of poison ivy leaves
along the path between the dunes.
Step down that boardwalk.
Stop. Stare. See.
It is enough
that Earth bends the horizon’s bow
to a taut curve
that spans,
encompasses
the sea:
an endless conch—
echoing.
Now, in this great space,
I am a child again:
little,
but not lost.
Comforted, cloaked round
with sky and summer’s ocean, sand,
my feet sinking
into glass-glint sharpness,
soles warmed
by the crimped white grit of it,
ears tuned
to the eider’s coo, the gull’s call
over tufts of marram grass;
to the flit & cry of terns
twisting
in salted air.
All this:
it is enough.
Lizzie Ballagher
Hen-Girl
A domestic fowl wearing a T-shirt
says – SOON TO BE MARRIED
gets on the bus with her hen friends,
Hen-Girl perches on the first step of the bus
like a tuft of feathers on her crown
she smooths her tiny veil and the passengers stare
her talons painted piercing against the dim lights
and grubby handles on the bus,
she’s not killing anybody cooing like a mother-hen.
The brood go to sit at the back
clucking and fussing over their shell suits
they fix their make-up,
and out of the handbags
pouring each other drinks, like counting eggs
boasting how many can they drink.
Cackling, stumbling on the aisle getting off the bus,
the heels of their shoes tearing and scratching
on the pavements as they run to make last orders
before they hit the nightclubs.
Johanna Boal
The Walls of the Hurricane
The busy sea edge: drystone walls run into the sea
waves lap around them washing and the sun drying
crows, seagulls nesting, the white marks on the grey seals
huddling the rocks blended like lichen the drystones walls.
Out on the ocean high winds lifting, water creating
another wall and it moves quickly with speed
as an athlete competing to the finish line,
surging water came ashore and bucketing rain
the birds quickly fly, the earliest drystones wallers run
gathering tools and buckets, water hammering over top stones
flooding the foundations of the ocean wall
spreading sea-life high the five-foot drystone walls
later – sweeping the water back to the ocean
gathering the drystones to maintain tradition:
the effective windbreak renewed continuing habitat
seagulls, crows, seals, children’s fishnets at the edge of the walls.
Johanna Boal
At the end of the Street
At the end of the street
From the house in which I grew,
Was a bakers, so the smell
Of baking bread would filter through
The window every morning
When I woke.
At the bottom of the street
From the house in which I grew
Was the corner shop, a sweet shop,
Though it was a grocer’s too,
That’s where my pocket money
Went to.
In the middle of the street
Was the house in which I grew.
We didn’t have much money,
But we still had lots to do,
And we had bread to fill
Our bellies
And pocket money jelly sweets
From the shop at the bottom
Of the street.
Joyce Walker
On wishing reality was a healer.
Cheers to blue serenity on the night of Qadr,
To the crescent moon like a broken plate,
To Ramadans bloom, dates and its sour age,
Chai and mud,to December’s fair breeze
Breaking through the watered skin, to the old chair,
Brown faded furniture, the sands grain like body,
To purple hibiscus,the folding mountain,
The bloated, the youngest full moon ,
To buried virtues, the forsaken magnolia,
The outcast by the mouth of the shore,
Cheers to these, sorry we believed all would heal,
A big cheer to the new born escaping from
The heavens like honey.
Abdulrazaq Salihu
Symphony of assistance
‘Fabulous eggs by fabulous birds’
I saw this, looked for more delight
or encouragement!
‘visual communications’
yes, this motorway has plenty
‘Discovery’
that’s what we need
‘challenge’
there’s plenty of that in our world today
‘blind spot take care’
yes, we’ve all got blind spots!
‘download the App’
will this help or hinder?
‘topspec decoration’
I’d like that
‘Doors that do more’
do they open on a new day
or show us the way?
‘Saints – urgent air freight’
Perhaps this is what we’re looking for?
‘everyday life made easier’
or this?
‘no hard shoulder’
Don’t cold shoulder me!
‘Enterprise’
thank you, I’ll have some of that.
‘Fabulous eggs by fabulous birds’
I still haven’t found these
breakfast delights!
Judy Dinnen
